Plunged into the world of fashion photography in the 1940s, Irving Penn sought something of an antidote in a series of nudes utterly devoid of artifice—unconventional explorations of various female bodies, including sensuously heavy ones, that emphasized their gravity and their changing forms in multiple views. It was 30 years before these nudes, shot in 1949 and 1950, were exhibited, but they played an important part in Penn's development as an artist. Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Maria Morris Hambourg presents this collection of 54 platinum prints (including four gatefolded series) of photos charged with physical and sensual energy, yet somehow monumental and even chaste.